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The Council of Thirteen
Book Ten: The Eleventh Lord
The Wrath of the Lich Queen
One Shot
Beta:
It was a normal afternoon in London as the pale skinned, gray eyed, glasses wearing Eriol Hiiragizawa, one of the two reincarnations of Clow Reed, walked up the path through the modest garden of the home that he had inherited from his previous life.
It is good to be back. The middle aged man in the guise of a twelve year old boy thought as he surveyed the quaint Victorian house. As much as I enjoyed my time in Japan confirming Sakura-chan's succession to Clow's power, it is good to be home.
"Ah! Home sweet home!" The brown haired, amber eyed energetic Akizuki Nakuru, the human guise of his Guardian Ruby Moon, said from her place trailing behind him. "Isn't that right, Suppi?"
"Yes, it is." Spinel Sun, Eriol's other, more taciturn Guardian, said in agreement from where he floated beside Nakiru in his disguised form as a small black cat plushie with butterfly-like blue wings. "Though must you call me by that annoying nickname Ruby?"
"Of course! It's cute!"
"But I despise it!"
Eriol had to bite the inside of his cheek to suppress the laughter that threatened to erupt as his two Guardians descended into bitter bickering over Ruby's use of the 'cute' nickname that she had given to Spinel and which he hated. It was an oft repeated argument and they were both engaged in it mostly in good humor, so rather than do something to put a stop to it Eriol let it run its course and let it be amusing background noise as he opened the front door to his home.
"Welcome home, Eleventh." The familiar and somewhat unwelcome figure of the Twelfth Lord of the Council of Thirteen greeted Eriol from his place leaning on the rail of the staircase at the end of the house's entrance hall.
Even before the Twelfth's projection finished speaking, Ruby and Spinel surged ahead of Eriol, transformed into their true forms and took up defensive positions between him and the Lord of the Thirteen. Spinel having gathered together a mass of light energy above the blue gem in the middle of the forehead of his pointy eared, black panther head and with his heckles and enlarged wings both tensed, it was clear he was ready to attack at the slightest provocation. Not to be outdone, Ruby's now red hair fluttered in the breeze that surrounded her as she projected shards of ruby red crystals around her butterfly winged body ready to use them both offensive and defensively.
"Spinel, Ruby, stand down." Eriol ordered and his Guardians reluctantly obeyed as he pushed past them to speak to the Twelfth directly. "Let us be civil about this."
"I am glad you are willing to hear me out, Eleventh."
"Not that I have a choice in the matter if you're already calling me that." Eriol said with a disapproving frown. "I take it that I have been granted the mantle of the Lord of the Celestial Mages?"
"Indeed that is your domain, Eleventh." The ancient said with a nod. "And are you surprised?"
"No," Eriol admitted. "I had expected as much when I realised shortly after my reincarnation that I was cut off from the other iterations of myself in Creation. I take it that was the work of the magic of the Thirteen?"
"It was," The Twelfth agreed. "I do not know what schemes your previous incarnation had in regards to the rest of Creation but I am glad that he was willing to spare some of his attention to our world's affairs."
"I would hardly call it simply 'sparing some of his attention'. He would've had to duplicate his efforts in his mainline universe here to achieve-" Eriol said, before cutting himself off as a previously suppressed memory of his past choosing to do just that entered his mind. "That bastard- He suppressed the memory till now."
"I suppose he wanted it to be a surprise." The Twelfth offered unhelpfully.
"It certainly fits with his personality." Eriol said with a sigh. "Well at least doing this frees me from being tangled up in whatever hijinks that he might have engineered elsewhere in Creation. Though I believe having to take on the responsibilities of a Lord of the Thirteen will be just as onerous."
"Perhaps," the Twelfth said with a shrug. "But do you accept the title?"
"Do I have a choice?" Eriol asked, shooting the projection an annoyed glare.
"No," the Twelfth said with a damnable grin. "But it is polite to ask anyways."
"I see," Eriol said with a tired sigh. "Very well. Then I accept."
Years later, Eriol found himself meeting with the British Prime Minister in a secure room inside 10 Downing Street. An annoyingly common occurrence since his ascension to Eleventh Lord. It had turned out that despite having three Lords of the Thirteen being British by birth, with Helena exiled to the Americas and Rose Iris having been spirited away to Sanctuary for some much needed rehabilitation after the abuse she'd suffered in the Wizarding World, he'd been saddled with the responsibility of being the magical authority for the United Kingdom and its liaison between its mundane and magical communities. Not that he blamed either of his colleagues for it, but the role, especially the political side of, truly grated on his nerves.
"Hello Eriol," the Prime Minister said as he sunk into the seat across from the Eleventh Lord looking ragged. Eriol was unsurprised. Running a country would do that to a person.
"Hello Mister Prime Minister," Eriol returned politely. "You asked to speak to me?"
"Yes, Eriol, I did." The man said with an apologetic nod. "I know you hate having to do this, and Her Majesty's Government understands. It's why we try to avoid it by relying on our own agents but I'm afraid that this time things are just too dire to not call you in."
Eriol doubted just how understanding the British government really was but said nothing. It would be impolite. As was his opinion of most of the magical agents serving it.
"What's happened?" He said instead, choosing to get down to business as quickly as possible.
"I'm afraid we've received reports of wizards kidnapping non-wizard magical children." The Prime Minister said, sounding rightfully disgusted by the whole thing.
Eriol just sighed. It seems that the wizards really wanted war with the Council. Or at least a subset of them. Even after Dom's personal warning to Albus Dumblefore and Sakura's formal one to the wizard's International Confederation of Wizards, and the latter's subsequent banning of the practice of wizards binding the true magic of non-wizard magical children in a bid to force them into becoming wizards, there were many wizards that refused to give up the practice.
"That normally wouldn't warrant us calling you in but-"
"Your agents found something?"
The older looking man nodded. "We think they might have links to the local wizarding government."
Eriol recoiled at the idea. "That would mean-"
"Yes, that their government condones these crimes. Something that if true would amount to an act of war."
It was after all not only the Council which had demanded the wizards stop the practice. The mundane governments had as well. The governments had partly been motivated by the fact that the wizarding practice was barbaric but also more pragmatically because it deprived them of the potential recruits to their magical services as the majority of these wizarding kidnappings were through misleading the children and their families into believing they were so-called muggleborn. And magicals born to mundanes made up the bulk of those magicals that the mundane governments recruited into their service.
"Which is why you want me involved. You want me to prove it either way and to rope in the Council on your side should this be the case."
The Prime Minister nodded.
"Very well." Eriol said with little hesitation. "Let's go catch us some kidnappers."
Eriol Hiiragizawa, the Eleventh Lord, and his Guardians
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"Do we really not have to intervene?" Spinel Sun asked as he, Ruby Moon and their master Eriol sat in the command centre built into the back of an armored truck and watched as a special forces team from the British military - their exact unit escaping him - prepared to raid a house in suburban Manchester.
"Not unless absolutely necessary." Eriol reminded him as he ran a hand soothingly down the neck of Spinel's true form. "We are mostly here to observe and to interrogate whoever they capture."
"Then couldn't we have come after they finished the job?" Ruby asked with a pout and fluttered her wings in annoyance. "I'm missing a gaming session with Touya and Yukito for this! You know how hard it is to arrange those considering the trouble with timezones!"
"You managed to reschedule didn't you?" Eriol said with a chuckle, even as Spinel shot his fellow Guardian an annoyed look for using something so trivial to try and wheedle her way out of work.
"I did, but it's the principle of the matter." Ruby said with a whine.
Spinel rolled his eyes and Eriol just chuckled.
"Sir!" One of the operators manning the consoles of the control center said, cutting into their conversation and reminding them of their presence. They had been so quiet through Ruby's little rant that the three of them had almost forgotten they were there. "The teams have begun their insertion."
"I see it," Eriol told the man as he waved his right hand and conjured a magic circle within which played the real time feeds from the pixie familiars that the Eleventh Lord had contracted for the night to accompany the special forces troops and serve as their eyes and ears.
It seemed the teams weren't encountering all too much difficulty. Or at least no one was getting in their way yet anyways as they breached into the building and began fanning out to secure it.
"Contact!" One of the operators shouted and Spinel saw through his master's projection as one of the teams ran into a couple of wizards. The two wand wavers looked strangely emaciated, like they were wasting away, but nevertheless fought back with furious defiance. Their wands moving rapidly as they sent spell after spell at the team attacking them.
Sadly for the wizards, they were hopelessly outmatched. The two sorcerers on the team they were pitted against had both spent stints in the learning community Sakura-sama and Tomoyo-sama had set up in Tomoeda and come back with certifications in combat magic. One of them even received a commendation from Lady Dom herself! Against such seasoned opponents, the wizards stood no chance.
A fact borne out as their spells were absorbed harmlessly by the shields of one sorcerer, with even their much touted Killing Curse being blocked by some quickly conjured kite shields, whilst the other blasted them with a wave of electricity that knocked them both out. All in all, the whole skirmish had barely lasted a minute before the sorcerers and their mundane - or were some of them other types of magicals, Spinel didn't know - teammates were securing the room the wizards were defending and tying them up for processing.
That was only the first skirmish though and soon the control centre was abuzz with cries of "Contact!", reports and orders. All whilst the special forces teams continued their one-sided beatdown of the kidnapping wizards. Admittedly the wizards put up a dogged defense but between being outnumbered and outclassed magically, they were falling fast. Though not without casualties as a number of the special forces operatives did sustain injuries. Nothing fatal though.
"Looks like we've found where they're holding the children," Eriol said as he waved his hand and created a new magical circle that pushed the previous one to the side a little. The new circle showed the feed from only one pixie, presumably the one linked to the team who'd found the kidnapped children.
Inside the house's basement were a set of cages, at least ten of them. Six of which housed a dirty, addled looking child dressed in rags. Standing in the middle of this dungeon were six wizards who promptly opened up on the operatives descending into the basement with spells. Or more accurately shot at the illusion of the team that its resident illusionist had cast as a distraction, causing it to fizzle out of existence and gave his teammates the opening they needed to pump the kidnappers full of bullets. It was a satisfying sight seeing the six pathetic excuses for human beings dancing from the force of the bullets perforating their bodies, but that was nothing compared to the coup de grâce performed by the team's elementalist who sent a wind blade at the wizards that lobbed all their heads off in one go.
"As satisfying as that was," Eriol said with a sigh. "I sincerely hope that the leader of this cell was not among those they just killed. Or we might have just eliminated one of our best sources of intelligence."
Spinel agreed but unenthusiastically. Even if vital intelligence was at stake, he couldn't help but feel vindictive satisfaction at the death of those abominable people.
Kaho Hiiragizawa née Mizuki, wife of the Eleventh Lord
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Kaho Hiiragizawa née Mizuki, wife of the Eleventh Lord of the Council of Thirteen, played with her long brown hair nervously as she stood to one corner of the interrogation room where she and her husband was about to interrogate the leader of the cell of kidnappers he had observed being captured by British special forces earlier in the evening. On either side of her stood Eriol's Guardians, guarding her just in case.
"You are the leader of the kidnappers captured in Manchester?" Eriol asked the sallow skinned, emaciated man looking man dressed in surprisingly well cut and high quality robes that sat bound in chains aglow with magic suppressing runes across from him at the metal table that separated them.
"Yes, I am." The wizard said with a shrug. "But you already knew that."
Eriol ignored him to look at Kaho. She nodded to indicate that the man was telling the truth. Before Sakura-chan had split his magic at his request when she had succeeded Clow Reed's legacy, he'd have no need for her to do this for him. However, ever since then he'd lost his proficiency in certain schools of magic that Clow, and Eriol pre-splitting of his magic, had once excelled at. Truth telling was one of them, hence her need to assist with the interrogation.
"Yes," Eriol conceded to the man as he looked back to him. "And you've been remarkably forthright with us so far. Why is that?"
"No point lying to you, is there?" The wizard with another shrug. "Besides, Her Majesty wants you lot to know."
"Her Majesty?"
"Oh, that you'll have to figure out on your own little Lord." The wizard said spitting out Eriol's title like it was poison.
"I see," her husband said after confirming with Kaho that the wizard hadn't been lying. He hadn't. "Then what does this mysterious Queen of yours want us to know?"
"After interrogating all the kidnappers that have been detained and reviewing the recovered evidence, I must concur with your analysts. These kidnappers are being covertly supported by the British wizarding government calling itself the Ministry of Magic." Eriol said, concluding his report to the special session of the British Cabinet and the Queen that had been called to discuss the matter.
As he took his seat, the various Ministers burst into heated discussion on how to proceed. One very vocal camp demanded they declare war on the wizards immediately, whilst another less loud but equally firm faction implored that they seek a diplomatic solution.
Eriol glanced at the Prime Minister and saw him desperately trying to calm things down to attempt to work out a compromise but failing miserably. In fact, his attempts just seemed to turn the ire of both camps against him as they both at once sought his support for their position and lambasted him for his apparent indecision.
"Enough!" The Queen said, raising her voice just slightly but someone still managing to silence the room as if her voice was the sound of thunder. "This is unbecoming of Ministers of my government. Restrain yourself ladies and gentlemen and let us plan our response to this affront to my subjects."
"Your Majesty, are you implying-" The Foreign Secretary said, only to be cut off sternly by the Queen.
"That we cannot let this crime go unpunished? Yes, I do, Honorable Foreign Secretary." The Queen said in the most cutting formal tone Eriol had ever heard. "The wizards have been engaged in such activities for long enough. It can no longer be tolerated. If the wizards refuse to stop such practices then they must be made to do so."
"But the costs-"
"Are something we must pay," the Queen said in rebuttal to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. "Or would you rather it be known that my government is in the habit of allowing foreign parties to routinely kidnap my subjects? Children at that!?"
That shut down all protests immediately.
"Then we're all decided?" The Prime Minister said shooting all the members of his Cabinet a searching look in turn and receiving signs of agreement from all of them, some more reluctant than others. "Good. Then let's do what needs to be done. It is time that Her Majesty's Government declares war on Wizarding Britain."
Ruby Moon psyched herself up as she and Spinel prepared to escort their master whilst in their true forms as he smacked down those awful wizards at last. It was long overdue in her opinion, but apparently politics had prevented it from happening earlier. If it hadn't… Well, Ruby suspected Lady Dom would have casually levelled their quaint little isolationist society when she'd rescued poor Miss Rose Iris.
"Spinel, Ruby, ready?" Eriol, dressed in his formal blue robes and black hat and wielding his staff, asked as he finished kissing Kaho-sama goodbye. An act of affection that the notoriously - at least in Ruby's opinion - shy couple normally reserved for when they were alone, but now were more open about as they became more openly affectionate since Kaho-sama had discovered her pregnancy.
"Yes, master." Ruby and Spinel chorused.
"Good." He declared with a nod and began calling on his magic. "Let's get this done. Spinel, contact the others and tell them to follow my lead."
"Yes, master." Ruby's feline counterpart said as he reached out telepathically to the other insertion teams and informed them to follow their master's teleportation trail.
"Stay safe, Eriol, Ruby, Spinel." Kaho-sama told them sternly whilst sporting a playful smile. "And I expect all three of you back by dinner."
"We will," Eriol promised with a smile of his own. "On both counts."
"They are ready, master." Spinel reported and Eriol nodded.
"Then, see you in a bit Kaho."
With that last goodbye, Eriol began the teleport and the three of them were briefly surrounded by a burst of light. When it had faded, the image of Kaho-sama waving them goodbye was replaced instead of the overly elaborate atrium of the wizard's Ministry of Magic, the seat of Wizarding Britain's power, in London over which they hovered atop a magical platform.
The atrium of the wizards' British Ministry of Magic
( . )
The place was a very long hall with a highly polished dark wood floor. Its ceiling was peacock blue and was filled with golden symbols that kept moving like a notice board. The walls on each side were covered in gilded fireplaces. Halfway down there was a gaudy fountain decorated by a group of golden, larger than life-size, statues that stood in the middle of a circular the far end of the hall was what looked like a security desk, a café and a set of double golden gates leading to at least twenty access lifts.
The whole place, mainly due to the truly ostentatious fountain, stank of arrogance. Seriously! Having the centerpiece of your entrance lobby be dominated by something that so blatantly extolled the superiority of wizards, over not just other magical races as represented by the centaur, goblin and house-elf but also witches by having its statue loom patronisingly over the others!? Not only was it speciesist, it was sexist!
In the brief moment that Ruby took to survey the atrium, the other insertion teams had also arrived, teleporting in through their own various means. Some teleported in via bursts of light like they had, others used portals, and others just shimmered in. Everywhere they materialized they triggered panic in the throngs of wizards that had occupied the atrium prior to their arrival.
All over cries of denial about "How the Ministry's wards should make this impossible" and other such nonsense abounded. Not all the wizards were panicking like a bunch of headless chickens though, even if most of them were, and a bunch of them drew their wands to contest the strike teams' arrival.
Sadly for them, Eriol was having none of it.
"Sleep." He incanted, casting the hypnotic spell he'd picked up from Tomoyo-chan and causing those wizards who had been prepared to fight to all drop unconscious all at once.
A feat that terrified the remaining wizards if their screeching was anything to go by.
"Surrender!" Eriol shouted, his voice magically amplified so it could be heard by everyone present. "This is a joint raid by both Her Majesty's Government and the Council of Thirteen. By their combined authority, Wizarding Britain's autonomy is hereby revoked. Do not resist and surrender your wands to our forces or be considered an enemy combatant. That includes women and children. So long as you raise your wand at us, you will be seen as an enemy and dealt with accordingly."
That had been something of a stickler for Eriol when the British government had pushed for it, but he'd eventually been forced to fold on the matter. After all, armed with a wand even a child could pull off a potentially deadly spell. For the safety of their men and everyone really, they had to be considered a threat and dealt with accordingly. Ruby didn't like it, and neither did Eriol, but they had to concede to that logic.
"Surrender!" Eriol repeated.
For a long moment, the crowd of wizards just stood there in stunned, panicked silence before one by one wands dropped to the floor.
"You have made a wise decision," Eriol told the surrendering wizards honestly. "Men, secure the prisoners."
"Sir, the atrium is secure." The commander of the special forces units assigned to the occupation of the headquarters of the wizard's Ministry reported as Eriol eyed the access lifts at the end of the hall warily. They had set up a defensive perimeter around them and the other entry points in and out of the hall, like the visitor's entrance and the fireplaces, but none of those gave him the strange sense of unease as the lifts.
A feeling that had been one of the reasons, besides needing to first secure their foothold in the atrium, that they hadn't yet sent teams onto the building's other floors.
"The prisoners?" Eriol asked distractedly, unable to tear his eyes away from the lifts.
"My men have 'ported them out to be processed back at base just like planned." The commander informed him. "I think it's time we pushed ahead sir."
Eriol frowned. It was time. They were out of excuses not to.
He was just about to open his mouth to reluctantly give the order to do so when suddenly the lift doors all opened at once. They all opened up to empty elevator shafts without a single car in sight.
"What the-" One of the soldiers manning the perimeter around the lifts said, cutting himself off as something crawled out of one of the open lift doors.
It might have once been a woman if the tattered remnants of the green tweed skirt suit and pink fuzzy cardigan that it was wearing was anything to go by. But whatever had happened to her had stripped away almost all her humanity. In its place was a abomination with sallow skin covered in sickly green mucus, and a body that had been twisted into a grotesque approximation of a toad's body plan complete with her lungs being fused together and bursting out of her ribcage in imitation of a throat sac. It reeked of undeath and prominently branded atop the forehead of the creature was the snowflake symbol of the Outsider and member of the Sapphic Circle known as the White Queen.
The White Queen's symbol
( . )
The toad-like creature was however sadly not the last of the undead horrors that began to pour out of the elevator shafts. As a tide of undead flesh crawled out of them, each marked by the same brand on their foreheads in a mocking statement to one and all just who was responsible for this nightmare. Ghouls, skeletons, previously unclassified undead terrors like the toad creature surged out like something out of a zombie apocalypse movie.
"Fire! Fire!" The commander ordered, even as his men did just that, unleashing a myriad of magical attacks upon the undead horde even as their mundane counterparts fired away at it with their assault rifles on full auto.
"Spinel, Ruby!" Eriol shouted as he raised his sunburst tipped staff and prepared a spell to assist the special forces troops.
His faithful Guardians heeded his command and leapt into the fray. Spinel burned away whole ranks of the undead horde with beams of light even as Ruby alternated between shooting rains of razor sharp crystal to thin their enemies' numbers and raising walls of it to serve as makeshift fortifications for their allies. To this, Eriol added the might of his own magic and unleashed a firestorm right at the bank of elevators hoping to stem the flow of undead reinforcements.
"It won't be so easy, Eleventh Lord!" A voice said in a raspy hiss as a wraith appeared out of nowhere right next to Eriol and leveled a wand at him. "Avada Kedavra!"
The green bolt of the wraith's killing curse was intercepted by a shield of Ruby's red crystal even as Eriol teleported out of its path. As he rematerialized he saw that the sheer destructive power of the spell had shattered his Guardian's admittedly hurried defense, no mean feat considering Eriol had seen it once withstand the full brunt of an attack from Sakura-chan's The Hope.
"You two will not interfere," the wraith said as it teleported away from Spinel's retaliatory laser.
It wasn't bluffing either as by the time it rematerialized in front of Eriol, the toad creature from earlier had used a tongue made out of what looked like the intestines of the woman that it had been in life and physically tossed Ruby away from him. Spinel on the other hand had found himself waylaid by a heat resistant and flame retardant slime that was macabrely wearing a lime green bowler hat.
Even as Eriol took a second or two to check on his Guardians, he unleashed a barrage of light bolts charged with healing energy at the wraith. Who, much to Eriol's surprise and irritation, proceeded to swerve around the tightly packed bolts.
"You will have to do better than that to beat Lord Voldemort, Eleventh Lord!" The wraith taunted as it once more leveled its wand at him. "Avada Kedavra!"
"What are you? A one trick pony?" Eriol shot back as he manipulated gravity around himself to rip a chunk of the atrium's floor out of the ground in front of him to act as a shield.
Teleporting away as his makeshift barrier exploded and throwing up a cloud of dust, he rematerialized above the expanding cloud.
"Solar Flare." He incanted, launching a beam of burning hot plasma down into the cloud and scorching everything it touched.
Which sadly did not include the wraith as it teleported behind Eriol and once more hurled the Killing Curse at him.
"You really are a one trick pony," Eriol decided even as the sickly green beam of the deadly curse passed through the illusion he'd left as a decoy as he dropped his invisibility and revealed himself to be above the wraith.
He was about to cast a spell but before he could, the wraith twisted its body around like a contortionist and fired another Killing Curse directly at him.
Caught off guard, Eriol had no time to muster a proper defense or teleport away and was forced to hope his defensive wards held. The most dreaded of the wizard's curses slammed into the nine layers of nested barriers that served as his armor and shattered all of them, but they did slow it down. Marginally so, but enough for Eriol to pull a teleport that took him higher in the air of the cavernous atrium and out of the curse's path.
"Cleansing Light!" He cast the moment he rematerialized.
At his incantation, a burst of blinding blue light burst from his staff and engulfed the entire atrium. Suffused with healing magic, every wound his allies sustained by its touch was spontaneously healed whilst on the contrary the undead burned to cinders in its cleansing embrace.
"I-Impossible," a singed looking wraith said as it surveyed how its undead host had seemingly been destroyed by a single spell.
"Perhaps for a one trick pony like you," Eriol said as he prepared another powerful spell to finally end the creature. "But not for one of the Thirteen."
"You have not defeated me yet, Thirteen!" The wraith said as it began to shimmer away. "You have not seen the last of Lord Voldemort!"
"Purifying Lance." Eriol cast, sending a lance of pure white energy shooting towards the wraith only for it to pass through empty space as it managed to teleport away before his spell could hit home.
Even as his Guardians flew up to worriedly check on him, one thought dominated Eriol's mind.
It got away.
"Here's the report on what we've learned about the source of those undead Eriol encountered in the wizards' Ministry." Kaho said as she looked at the projections of the Twelfth, Sakura-chan, Tomoyo-chan and Lady Dom as they gathered via magic inside her living room to hear her findings on the tragedy.
"Pardon me, Kaho-san," Lady Dom said politely. "But why are you giving this report and not Eriol?"
"Kaho prepared most of it. It's only fair she gives the briefing." Eriol said with a shrug from where he sat on their loveseat flanked by Ruby and Spinel in their true forms.
"That's fair enough, I guess." Lady Dom said with a nod. "Please go ahead Kaho-san."
"Thank you, Lady Dom." Kaho said with a nod to the Thirteenth Lord before clearing her throat to restart the briefing proper. "Based on our analysis of the evidence recovered from the wizards' Ministry, it appears that certain members of the organisation were members of a necromantic cult led by Voldemort dedicated to the White Queen of the Sapphic Circle."
"The Lich Queen of Remnant?" Tomoyo-chan asked with a frown. "Isn't she the one who accidentally killed her own lover then went mad and destroyed her own world?"
"Yes, that's the White Queen." The Twelfth confirmed. "She's one of the nastier members of the Sapphic Circle. Very unstable. At least that's her reputation."
"Well, her being an undead Outsider explains how she managed to help that Voldemort fellow survive his defeat at Omer's hands all those years ago."
"Wasn't that due to him making use of Horcruxes."
"The two are not mutually exclusive," Kaho cut in, just a tad exasperated at the way not only had she been interrupted but the whole briefing had been taken along a complete tangent. She supposed that this was how meetings of the Thirteen Lords operated but surely her former students Sakura-chan and Tomoyo-chan hadn't let their manners degrade so much over the years. She remembered them being much more polite as children.
"Kaho-sensei is correct." Sakura-chan said with a nod. "And let's not get distracted, shall we?"
There was a chorus of acknowledgements and apologies from the other Lords, and a stifled snicker from Eriol, but Kaho just waved that all away and just continued the briefing. Though not without a smile at Sakura-chan.
At least someone didn't forget their manners.
"It seems one of the aims of the cult was to corrupt our world's magic with their goddess' influence, something which the Outsiders had promised would damage the Council somehow."
Sakura-chan and Tomoyo-chan seemed confused by this so Kaho elaborated.
"It seems many of the cultists were acting, at least in part, out of bitterness towards the Council for what they saw as it lording their power over them. Quite a bit of material we recovered suggests that playing on this was a big part of how they attracted new members."
"It is truly sad," Eriol said as everyone else descended into a thoughtful silence. "To realize that the cult's members were driven to sell their souls to the Outsider out of the bitterness they felt towards us. That something like that was enough to drive them to betray their very world."
It truly was sad. Heartbreakingly so.
"Well, that was underwhelming." Frenda noted with a frown as she and the rest of the Sapphic Circle finished reviewing the aftermath of the White Queen's first move in their little war with Thirteen.
"For now that is," the aforementioned undead Outsider said with a smirk. "But this only serves as the set up for something bigger that I've planned for the near future. And I'm sure that when that play finally culminates, it will be a net benefit to us."
The other members of the Sapphic Circle exchanged skeptical looks but ultimately just shrugged.
"I guess we'll just have to wait and see then." Ellen said, summing up their feelings on the matter.
Done!
A good chunk of the first scene, if not all of it, will require an understanding of first Cardcaptor Sakura and the CLAMP multiverse (especially the part shown in Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle). Normally, I would try to spell the details out (and I gave the relevant details for the CCS portions) but considering the breadth and depth involved, I think I'll let anyone interested in exploring it do so on their own. For the purposes of this story, just know that Eriol's previous incarnation, Clow Reed, is a major player in the affairs of multiple dimensions and the scene serves to divorce COT!Eriol from that.
I can imagine some readers might be saying that I am engaging in bashing of the Wizarding World at this point. And to an extent I am. It just has a lot of flaws to it if considered from the perspective of a world where alternative forms of magic exist. Where is the magical diversity in their schools/communities? If taken to its logical conclusion, at least to me, that means they forced those inside their schools/communities to follow their school of magic. That this would include some of the 'kidnappings' as described in this fic, at least to a small extent, I think would be a given. You know some elements of the Wizarding World, even some of the 'good' ones, wouldn't be adverse to stooping to it for the 'greater good' of their society. Am I being uncharitable? Definitely, but this is fanfic and I can choose to if I want to and I most definitely do.
If anyone is wondering why Voldemort just kept using the Killing Curse and nothing else in the fight with Eriol, it's actually quite simple. If you pay attention to it, Eriol was actually having trouble finding ways to block the curse. Unlike Omer, he doesn't have an easy counter to it. Especially as demonstrated in the chapter, his barriers just aren't strong enough, unlike Rose Iris' (though to be fair she only managed because she was dealing with Flitwick who didn't really want to kill her thus his spell was far weaker than Voldemort's), to just block it. Considering one shot of the curse would kill him, there really was little point in Voldemort even trying to use something else.
Okay, that's it for now. Till next chapter cheers!